Chaos Gardening...Gardening the Way Nature Intended

Chaos gardening, or, as our son likes to call it, "Ruckus Gardening" - what is it and why do we as a family choose to do it on our homestead? The truth is, conventional gardening can be a bit drab or boring sometimes. Sure, you make these pretty garden beds and have everything labeled really nicely, organized, perfectly spaced, in rows or lines, and you know absolutely everything you've planted in these areas. So you wait and wait and wait then eventually your seeds pop up and you have plants growing that you're well aware of. Now that's all fine and dandy but what if we took a page out of nature's book instead?

Next time you're on a hike or driving past an undeveloped or underdeveloped part of your city, take a look out into the world and notice what you see? You will see that nature isn't nice and neat and tidy. Nature, rather, is in a constant state of organized chaos. There aren't perfect rows of trees all in a nice, neat line with nothing around them. There are vast amounts of shrubs and flowering perennials and annuals and understory trees and grasses and all of the interactions among them and the microorganisms and macro-organisms that dwell within them.

Seeds don't fall from plants in a nice, neat way. Rather, they are cataclysmically thrown random places due to strong winds or fires or even just animals dispersing them about.

Did you know that a vast majority of oak trees are grown in nature simply because squirrels bury acorns and then forget about them? We are nature too and can easily follow the same principles. On our homestead, we like to use these principles to chaos garden. We grab random seeds and throw them down in random places in the garden where it is sure to get water. Now our family gets the joy and pleasure and surprise of what those new plants growing will turn into. And we can teach our kids how different plants grow and look different at different stages of life and how to differentiate them from each other. This allows us to educate them on proper identification at various stages in the plant's life.

So forget about "perfect" for a second and follow us into a world of chaos. Your plants will thank you and so will all the creatures dependent on the biodiversity your garden will provide. Grab some seeds, throw them at random throughout the garden, and see what grows. Happy (chaos) planting!

Created: 4/30/25